Food Cost Calculator For Recipes

Last Updated: Jun 7, 2025

Created by

Saqib Hanif

Saqib Hanif is the CEO and founder of Calculator Value. He builds calculators and educational content across sports, math, and science, and supports a limited set of construction-related calculators. Read full profile

The Recipe Food Cost Calculator helps restaurants and food businesses accurately price their menu items by calculating recipe costs and recommended selling prices.

How It Works

This calculator uses these essential recipe costing formulas:

Total Recipe Cost = Ingredient Cost × (1 + Waste%)
Cost per Portion = (Total Recipe Cost ÷ Number of Portions) + Additional Cost per Portion
Recommended Price = Cost per Portion ÷ Target Food Cost%
Profit per Portion = Recommended Price - Cost per Portion

Example Calculation

Recipe Yield: 8 portions
Total Ingredient Cost: 24.00 dollars
Waste Percentage: 10%
Additional Cost per Portion: 0.50 dollars
Target Food Cost: 30%

Results:

Total Recipe Cost = 24.00 × 1.10 = 26.40 dollars
Cost per Portion = (26.40 ÷ 8) + 0.50 = 3.80 dollars
Recommended Price = 3.80 ÷ 30% = 12.67 dollars
Profit per Portion = 12.67 - 3.80 = 8.87 dollars

Industry Guidelines

For restaurant menu items, these are standard ranges:

Target Food Cost: 28-35% (fine dining: 28-32%, casual: 32-35%)
Waste Percentage: 4-12% (varies by ingredient type)
Portion Size Variance: Keep within ±5% for consistency

This calculator helps ensure menu items are priced profitably while maintaining industry-standard food cost percentages.

Industry-Standard Formulas: The formulas and methods used in this calculator follow widely accepted standards in Financial.
Careful Verification: The calculator is tested to ensure it behaves correctly across a range of inputs.
Continuous Updates: The calculator is updated as needed to reflect better accuracy and usability.

Related Calculators

Food Cost Percentage→Restaurant VAT→Pour Cost→Menu Pricing→

In a restaurant, catering business, or any food-related business, calculating the cost of a recipe is essential to ensure a healthy profit. Our Recipe Food Cost Calculator is a tool that helps you estimate how much it costs you to make a dish, calculate the cost per portion, set your desired profit margin, and also determine the ideal price you should charge based on your target food cost percentage.

What Is a Recipe Food Cost Calculator?

A Recipe Food Cost Calculator is an online tool that is used to estimate how much it costs to make a recipe or dish, including ingredient costs, waste, and additional costs. Based on the values you enter — such as recipe yield, total ingredient cost, waste percentage, additional costs, and more — the calculator shows you a detailed breakdown:

Total Recipe Cost (including waste)
Cost per Portion
Recommended Selling Price
Profit per Portion

How to Use This Recipe Food Cost Calculator

Using this calculator is simple. You just need to fill out the appropriate values in each field, and the calculator will instantly give you the results. Let's dive into an example to understand how it works.
Suppose you're a chef making a pasta dish for your restaurant, with the following values:

Recipe Yield: 10 portions
Total Ingredient Cost: 100 dollars
Waste Percentage: 10%
Additional Cost per Portion: 0.5 dollars
Target Food Cost %: 30%

The calculator will instantly calculate and show the result below, but to understand how it works, let's compute the values using the formula to see the result:

Total Recipe Cost = 100 dollars × (1 + 10 / 100) = 110 dollars
Cost per Portion = (110 dollars / 10) + 0.50 dollars = 11.50 dollars
Recommended Selling Price = 11.50 dollars ÷ 0.30 = 38.33 dollars
Profit per Portion = 38.33 dollars - 11.50 dollars = 26.83 dollars

So, we have calculated that you should charge 38.33 dollars per portion to fulfill your desired profit goal of 30%.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is considered a good food cost percentage?

Most restaurants aim for a desired profit margin between 25% and 35%, which means the food cost percentage should be no more than 30% of your selling price. That helps cover other costs such as staff, rent, and utilities, and allows for profit.